Are you looking for an extra “something” when it comes to growing your SaaS?

As long as you have good strategies in place for retention and reducing churn, growth is a focus for most SaaS. The only problem is everyone else is trying to get attention too, so you need some innovative ways to cut through all the noise.

While “hacks” may be a bit of an overused term, we wanted to take a look at some post-launch strategies which are working for boosting SaaS growth. Strategies which give you exposure and help you to carve out a unique voice in the market.

Let’s check them out:

Get Yourself Featured…

If you can get your company featured outside of your own platforms and social media, it’s a great chance to tap into a wider audience. This doesn’t have to be a costly strategy for SaaS such as the old-fashioned methods of print media. There are many places with substantial audiences online where you can get featured for free if you play it right.

4 “Growth Hacks” For Your SaaS

Product Hunt has become a sort of “holy grail” for startups wanting some extra exposure, probably because it can drive large numbers of eyeballs to your product as Tristan Pollock points out.

It’s not an easy task getting featured however, many have tried and failed to get a spot on the coveted site. Your product has to be awesome for a start, (you’ve got that, right?) and you can’t simply submit it for consideration.

For starters, you need to be an invited member to comment on or submit products, so if Product Hunt is looking like a good strategy for your SaaS, then you need to have got the wheels turning well before wanting your product featured. Being a participating member early at least gives you some kind of voice on the platform ahead of time.

Whether you choose to be a member or not, you only get one shot for submitting your product for consideration and it’s much better if your product is submitted by someone outside of your company who has significant influence on Product Hunt.

There are already some excellent guides available online to take you through the whole process of a successful Product Hunt launch, so we won’t labor this for too long, but check out Ovi Negrean’s post on Foundr or Tristan Pollock’s post on 500.co.

A universal lesson is that you need to be building up your communities ahead of time and get to know key influencers, particularly any who have plugged products within your category before.

The law of reciprocity tends to hold true; don’t simply message them and ask them to promote your product, see what you can do for them first instead. For example, you might email them and offer them free access to check out your new software because you think it will be able to help them with …. Build the relationship first and then ask if they will submit to Product Hunt for you.

#2. Getting Featured on Hacker News

Hacker News is another great place for finding large numbers of early adopters, however, like Product Hunt it’s not easy to get yourself featured. Successfully nailing this one again tends to involve getting to know the right people and having good timing.

Hacker News works in a similar fashion to Reddit in that you want to rise up the list by having the highest number of upvotes over a short period of time. You want to have influencers on your side who are prepared to upvote and perhaps comment on your product.

Again, you’ll need to identify those people early and build a relationship with them. Ask for their feedback on your product and give them free access. Once you’re at a point where you’re submitting to Hacker News, as them to find your website on the “newest” page and upvote it (note: upvotes from direct link visits don’t count, so you need to ask them to find it).

Your aim is to get a number of upvotes in a short period of time so that you’re elevated to front page status. Groove wrote a great piece about their experience getting to the front page here.

#3. Guest Post Features

Many startups have had great exposure through writing guest posts for other sites, but there are some caveats if you want to ensure doing so is worth the effort:

Pick sites which serve an audience that includes your target market.

You’ve got to have well-written, informative content which delivers some kind of value to the audience. Your piece can’t be a giant sales pitch (you probably won’t get it featured otherwise).

Choose sites which have a substantial audience and are always publishing and promoting content.

You may not get your first pick of the most well-known blogs (TechCrunch and Mashable are worth pitching, but difficult to get onto), but make a large list of contenders by googling your appropriate keywords along with terms such as “guest post”, “submit a guest post” or “write for us.”

Look out for guest post guidelines on the websites you come up with — an instant way to be rejected is to breach those in some way. Oftentimes, the best way to get an “in” is to have built up some kind of relationship with a key influencer there, something Benjamin Brandall of Process St. discusses in his comprehensive piece on guest posting here.

Social Media

Building up a good presence and community on social media should go without saying for SaaS who want to boost their visibility, but here is another social media strategy that can help:

#4. Host Twitter Chats

Twitter chats are a great way to build brand advocacy, community and awareness around a brand. They are an opportunity to build your audience quickly and gather a bit of data on them. Like many other methods of exposure, they aren’t easy to set up (successfully) though.

A successful Twitter chat starts by having a good level of participation on the chat, something that is not always easy for startups who are just beginning to grow their following. One way to get around this is to identify a couple dozen key influencers in your space and send them an email prior to the chat.

You may wish to incentivize them, but in any case, you need to give them a compelling reason to participate. Send calendar invites and confirm attendance if you can — this can provide extra impetus for a wider audience to get involved if they know who’s going to be there.

Before your chat:

Determine a good hashtag.

Promote the chat.

Send a reminder to confirmed participants an hour beforehand.

Remind your list an hour beforehand.

Create images of questions with the hashtag so that you can post these during the chat and encourage shares.

Twitter chats done well can generate a lot of valuable discussion. Make the most of them by rounding up the best answers and creating blog content or other social media content from them. Promote them far and wide and make it worth any influencer’s time who did take part.

Final Thoughts

If you want to boost growth for your SaaS, you’ve got to start looking for some of those “road less traveled” strategies which can really help you to stand out.

Leveraging platforms which already have large audiences, such as Product Hunt, Hacker News or sites where you can guest post can provide significant exposure. Setting up a well-planned Twitter chat can also be rewarding.

One of the key things to remember for any of these methods is that success tends to come down to building good relationships with influencers. Make the effort to get to know people and find out how you can help them. Hopefully, the law of reciprocity will be on your side.

]]>7 Key Elements of an Effective Dunning Emailhttp://blog.stunning.co/7-key-elements-of-an-effective-dunning-email/
Mon, 21 Nov 2016 12:00:47 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=1087Dunning emails are a great way to combat churn; what does an effective email look like?

Churn is an issue of utmost concern to SaaS. The standard tends to be that your churn rate needs to be less than 5%, otherwise your SaaS could be in trouble.

After all, there’s no sense in spending a whole lot on marketing for acquisition if you’ve got a problem hanging onto customers in the long term, right?

There are a number of strategies you can put in place to combat churn, including quality onboarding processes and focusing on customer engagement, but you’ve also got to be paying attention to another common churn cause: failed credit card payments.

Credit cards may decline for a number of reasons. Perhaps the client didn’t have the funds available, but more often, you’ll find the card has expired. You can expect around 3% of your customers to have an expiring credit card each month, which could be 36% of your customers across a year. If you add in any other reasons for credit card payments failing, you’ve got quite a significant segment of your customers.

So, if you haven’t already, it’s time to do something about failed credit card payments, beginning with initiating dunning emails:

What does an effective dunning email look like? Get our template here:

7 Key Elements of an Effective Dunning Email

Dunning Emails

The term dunning comes for the word “dun”, which means to repeatedly ask debtors for payment. While this might conjure up unpleasant images of collections agencies or beefed up collectors removing furniture from a house, dunning emails shouldn’t be presented in this way to your customers.

The idea is that you should set up a series of emails, starting with pre-empting declined payments. How? Well, if the customer is a subscriber with you, their credit card details are already in your system so you can find when their card is going to expire.

The easiest way to set up these emails is with a tool which will analyze customer activity and trigger emails for you. If you happen to be a Stripe user, this is exactly what Stunning will do for you.

#1. Timing

First of all, if you’re trying to get the customer to update their credit card details before a transaction declines, generally getting in early is better. From our experience (and the same goes for dunning emails), customers often don’t respond to your first email. It’s usually from the second or third email that we see a better response.

We suggest using a good dunning software which picks up on expiring credit cards early and starts to send out email requests to update credit card information from at least one month prior to expiry.

As for the timing of your emails, whether you are sending them before or after a payment failure, you need to look for the right balance between communicating urgency and being plain annoying. We’ve found that sending three emails across the space of a week is a good place to start, but we always suggest testing to see what works best for your particular business.

#2. Return address and subject line

Next up, when you’re sending your emails, make sure you are sending from an email address which customers are able to respond to. “Do not reply” addresses can just add an extra level of frustration to the process for the customer because you haven’t made it easy for them to reply or ask any questions if they wish to do so.

As for the subject line of your email, make it clear why you are sending it so that the customer immediately knows there is a problem with their subscription. For example, your first email subject might be as simple as; [SaaS Name] Please update your billing information.

If the customer doesn’t respond to that first email, we would usually follow up with similar subject lines, except with “second notice” or “final notice” included. We usually send out three emails, but you might decide that four or five works better for you.

Again, the subject line is something which you may like to test out to see what gets the best response. We still suggest making it clear as to the purpose of the email, but of course you can reword it to suit.

#3. Tell them what happened

There’s no sense in fluffing around — get straight to the point and explain to the customer what happened that is causing you to write to them. For example:

“Hi George,

We just tried to charge your credit card for your subscription renewal at [SaaS Name], however it failed due to [reason].”

Simple and free of fluff. There is no need to pander or sound like you’re wheedling.

#4. Explain next steps

Every email you send out to customers should have some kind of clear call to action, and your dunning emails are no different. After telling them about their declined payment, give them a clear path to update their credit card details. For example:

“To keep your account active, we need current credit card information. Please update your credit card details by clicking here [insert link], within the next 7 days. Your account will be automatically cancelled after 7 days if payment details are not updated.”

There are a couple of important points here which you should include with explaining those next steps:

Give the customer a direct link within the email which doesn’t require them to login, open another window or click around looking for where they need to go to update payment details. The idea is to make it as simple as possible for them.

Give them a time limit. If you leave it wide open, you won’t convey any kind of urgency and the customer might put the task on the back-burner. Tell them how long they have before their account will be cancelled.

#5. Include value proposition

We like to try to personalize the emails we send out and remind the customer of value we have delivered to them already. It helps to keep in the minds of your customers why it is that they need you so that hopefully, they’re not hesitant to update their billing information.

For example you might say something like:

“[SaaS Name] has helped you to [specific value delivered] over the last month, so it’s important that you keep your account active to avoid any disruptions to this.”

It never hurts to remind people of the genuine value you provide them with, especially at this time where many are feeling “subscription fatigue” over the many different subscription products they probably have. It’s relatively easy for someone to do nothing about updating payment details if they don’t feel a compelling reason to keep the subscription.

#6. Increase the urgency

If the customer has not responded to your email the first time around, escalate the urgency of your tone in each email. That is not to say you should be demanding or threatening in any way (no one likes that “debt collector” image!), but you shouldn’t leave it uncertain as to how urgent it is that the customer updates their billing information.

Terms such as “second notice” or “final notice” are often enough to trigger people into action. You should also keep them aware of how much time they have, for example “your account will be cancelled in two days if payment information is not updated.”

You can keep things to the point without being unkind. Always remember that you want to keep your professional image with customers.

#7. Keep a professional tone

The words we use matter. You only have to look at the inflammatory responses banks often receive over delinquent mortgage accounts to get some examples of how not to treat customers. If you’re going to take a position that customers find threatening or unfair, the chances are they will not feel inclined to stay with you.

At the same time, coming across as begging is also not a good idea. We’ve seen emails along the lines of “please come back!” and they really do just take the tone of trying to wheedle something out of the customer.

Think about the language you use overall and what the likely response might be. For example, we prefer to say something like “we tried to charge your credit card, however it failed” rather than “your payment was declined.” It’s a subtle difference, but the second one sounds a bit more like you’re accusing the customer of something, whereas the first one is simply saying the card failed.

Final Thoughts

Staying on top of churn in your SaaS is not always easy, but you can stay ahead of the game if you implement a strategy for dunning. Credit card payment declines tend to represent a significant proportion of SaaS customers, so they are worth pursuing.

Use a good dunning software to set up automated emails so that you’re not having to manually look for upcoming credit card expiries or look for payment declines yourself.

Following the outlined steps to send out effective dunning emails can help you to combat churn and improve your overall SaaS revenue. We’d consider this to be a “quick win” that most SaaS will see results from.

]]>Setting up the Right UX for Your SaaShttp://blog.stunning.co/setting-up-the-right-ux-for-your-saas/
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 12:00:29 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=1076How well have you set up UX for your SaaS? Here’s why UX is an important part of reducing churn...

Many SaaS disappoint customers when the reality of their UX doesn’t match the “wrapping” of their landing pages and product videos.

It’s disappointing for the SaaS too. You put all of that work and investment into attracting customers, you work them up to a purchase, only for them to churn early because your interface is too clunky or your app is generally awkward or inflexible to use.

You’ve probably had experiences in your own life where the actual experience didn’t match up to the expectations you were set up for, right? Like a pair of socks in a large box with brilliant wrapping, you were probably left underwhelmed (unless you really love socks!).

Quite simply, the marketing material you put out needs to match up with the actual experience those who sign up are going to get. If not, you will see churn from low-tier signups and on upgrades.

Sometimes SaaS will over-emphasize features which are only available on premium tiers in early marketing materials. Just make sure you’re giving fair treatment of what to expect at each level and that you show an accurate representation of UX. Don’t represent clean, logical design if the reality of their experience is going to be more like a complex Excel spreadsheet.

Have a Thorough Onboarding Process

Your onboarding process plays a huge role in how successfully clients feel comfortable with your app. If the transition to using your app is clunky or overwhelming, you’re more likely to see higher churn numbers, while if you’re able to ease them into using it and seeing value, you’re more likely to successfully retain clients.

Onboarding also plays a big part in setting those expectations. It’s about walking users through so that they see success from your app. As a Usability Geek post states: “the success of every business depends on aligning business goals with customer needs.”

By the end of onboarding, your users should be confident that they have made a purchase which meets their needs and allows them to achieve their goals. From a UX perspective, product workflow should make sense to them, answering; “I need to get something done, how should I do it?”

Know the Link Between UX and Customer Success

Process St talks about this point; you should improve user experience with customer success in mind. Specifically, they make the following points:

If you can make it easier for your customers to interact with your app, they will achieve success more quickly, firmly and… long-lastingly.

Users should be primed for success from the moment they discover your app. This means that they should know what to expect by reading your copy and seeing your screenshots. It means they should have great interactions with the sales team who should try and teach the users about every feature they’ll need.

User experience — how it feels to use your app — should be optimized to make sure your users want to stick around, learn the new features, interact with your customer success and support staff.

If you successfully marry the UX with customer success, this is another point in favor of the retention of your clients.

UX Design Tips

The battle against churn begins with your UX. You want to design an app that creates interactions which are habit-forming. These might include sensory triggers, rewards, personalization and opportunities for commitment. These habit-forming interactions follow principles of behavioral engineering.

Furthermore, Jeluma Lai, UX lead at Zoho Books identifies the following design issues for SaaS applications:

Layout – You need to consider the various devices and habits of users to put together a layout which makes sense.

Product workflow – The less time it takes a user to complete a task they’d like to do, the more of a win for UX.

Visual design – It’s not good enough for an app to simply work, customers expect a beautiful design now too, otherwise they probably won’t use it.

Forms – These are always necessary so making them easier to use is a task for UX.

With these in mind, here are some UX tips for SaaS:

#1. Reduce form friction

You know what most people do when they see a form with 12 fields to fill out? They think “ugh” and run away. You’ve got to remember that you may have people filling out forms on a mobile device too — how clunky is it when there are multiple fields?

The simple solution is to reduce the number of fields you require for initial signup. Only ask for the minimum information that you really need to get people going.

#2. Reduce other friction points

There are actually a number of other ways by which SaaS create friction for customers with their processes. Here are a few to consider nixing or streamlining:

Complex password rules. Chargebee wrote a good piece about this, highlighting how constraining users with your 17 rules for creating a password leads to password fatigue and frustration.

Source: Chargebee

Forcing users to fully complete their profiles before they can use your app. Is this really necessary? Your users may well be fatigued already by the time they get through the list of prompts you have prepared for them.

Creating a mandatory onboarding flow which a user must get through before they can use your software. Seriously, how well do you like it if you’re forced to do something when all you really want to do is get to the main point?

#3. Design for existing behaviors

Remember the story behind games such as Minesweeper? This was effectively an onboarding tool to get users used to the way Windows would work with a mouse. While of course you may have some new way of doing things included with your app, building off existing models of how people expect software to work will make for an easier transition.

#4. Contextualize everything

This was an important point raised by Jeluma Lai; good UX is logical and contextualized, with the experience seeming as linear as possible to the customer. This means that they shouldn’t be sent off to separate settings screens for “side tasks” in the process.

#5. Focus on your most common features

When it comes to UX and UI design, your most common features, those which the customer is initially coming to you for had better be impeccable. You might start with understanding exactly what those are — what unique problem/s are you solving and for who?

Knowing who your customer is and what they expect will help you to focus on the features which are most important rather than going down a tangential path on “nice to haves.” If I purchase your accounting app, yet it won’t integrate properly with my payment provider without me having to go to all sorts of extra trouble, how likely am I to stick around?

]]>Customer Education 101: How to Understand Them and Make Them Understand Youhttp://blog.stunning.co/customer-education-101-how-to-understand-them-and-make-them-understand-you/
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 11:00:46 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=1066Have you created an education program which caters to customer needs? Here’s how you can help customers to understand you.

What Are Your Goals?

Before embarking on any kind of customer education program, you should be clear on exactly what the business needs to get out of it. Bill Cushard points out that you might have many goals to pursue education-wise, so the question to ask is:

“What can customer education do to help drive the goals that the business cares about most?”

For example, do you want to:

Increase the number of qualified leads you have?

Reduce your churn rate?

Get more customer upgrades?

Reduce support tickets?

Increase product usage?

Having your business goals in mind before kicking off any education initiatives will help to ensure that you stay focused on those items which are really important for achieving those goals. Most SaaS have limited resources when it comes to budget or bandwidth for producing and promoting educational resources, so keep them targeted.

Know Your Customer

In order to produce more effective resources, you really need to have a good grasp of who your ideal customer is first. This is so that you’re able to both attract the right customers in the first place, and provide them with the educational resources which will best suit them.

First of all, have you clearly defined the problem/s your SaaS is solving? Your ideal client identifies themselves as having that problem and it is annoying enough to them that they will pay for a good solution.

Once you’re clear on the problem or problems you solve, first look at the broader categories of businesses or individuals who have this problem, then narrow them down to specifics. For example, could your target customer be the CMO of an enterprise? A sales representative of a SaaS? A solopreneur?

If you want to be even more targeted, you can go even deeper and determine the exact industry they are in. How educated are they? How pressed for time? Basically, the more details you can build into a customer profile, the better it will help you devise the right education strategies. It will also save you from developing redundant strategies. A CEO probably doesn’t want to sit through 30 minute webinars, for example.

Learning Styles

Identifying the ideal customer who will pay for your solution to their problem is a great first step in helping you understand your customers, now you need to work on getting them to understand you.

Many SaaS make the mistake of thinking that if they blast out a list of features, those will be enough to draw in those ideal clients, but you’ll find that many customers don’t really understand those features. In fact, they may not even care. What they do care about is that you’re solving their problem in a meaningful way.

This is where your education program comes in. No matter what segment of your sales funnel you’re aiming at or which goals you are looking to achieve, you will find that you encounter—and need to cater for—different learning styles.

Visual – Just as it sounds, this person prefers diagrams, pictures, maps and presentations.

Auditory – Learns best through listening and speaking.

Kinesthetic – “Hands on” learners. Like to have tactile representations of information.

Read and write – This group learns best through words.

Do you see what we mean? If you were to decide that all learning will be done via an email course, you’ve probably just completely lost your auditory and kinesthetic learners in terms of actually completing your education program, possibly your visual learners too. Your “read and write” learners will however be happy.

Buyer Modality

“Buyer modality” is another consideration to be aware of which can go hand-in-hand with how you cater to learning styles in your customer education. After all, your customer is not just a learner, they are (hopefully!) a buyer. This theory says that there are four fundamental personality types or “modalities” among your buyers.

Those modalities are plotted on a chart with speed preference (fast vs. slow) on one axis and preference for logic vs. emotion on the other.

Your competitive buyer will value smart, logical decisions which give them a clear competitive advantage. The methodical buyer is an analyst, drawn to data and processes. Spontaneous buyers are more likely to impulse-buy based on the thrill of a quick purchase and the simplicity of doing so. Lastly, humanistic buyers are interested in the “human” side, the real-life case studies and the affirmation that others like them are using your solution for the same problem.

When you add in modality as a factor, you start to see that a good education program will not only cater to multiple learning styles, but will understand and deliver for buyer modalities, highlighting those things which each prefer.

Borrow Ideas from Others

There are companies out there (SaaS or otherwise) doing a great job of customer education and people are taking notice. For example, AirBnB puts out a lot of educational material for hosts, helping them to run a better business, get better reviews or just ensure the safety of their property.

Canva offers a quick onboarding video to new users, but then has a great library of design tips and tutorials in the form of their Design School. To make things even easier, users can browse Design School by category and cut through anything they don’t need.

Dropbox has a file already created for you when you join which teaches you how to use it. They engage users further by offering rewards for taking their tour.

Get Customer Feedback

Never overlook the “horse’s mouth” as a good source for ideas on improving your customer education program. Survey your customers or even call some of them and ask how they find your educational resources and whether they could suggest any improvements.

Besides asking, put steps in place to measure the effectiveness of your education programs. Keep metrics on how many customers go through your resources and which seem to be the most popular.

How can you cater learning resources to different styles? Check out our free guide:

Final Thoughts

Developing a quality education program for your customers is an important part of ensuring that you retain more of them. Part of that is understanding them so that you can help them to understand what you are about.

Know exactly what problem you are solving and who needs that problem solved enough to pay for it. Develop a profile of that ideal customer so that you understand their needs and what they will expect from your educational resources.

Recognize that there are different learning preferences as well as buyer modalities which impact how effective your resources will be. It is always a good idea to create different types of resources which will meet these varying needs.

Lastly, keep a finger on the pulse of what’s working by measuring and gathering feedback. Actionable feedback will guide better resources and boosted customer engagement.

How many customers does your SaaS have lingering on a freemium tier or, not getting beyond your free trial?

One of your fundamental goals is always to get your customers to upgrade and stick with you, but unfortunately, many SaaS don’t perform so well in that field.

We’ve previously highlighted strategies for convincing customers to upgrade, but one piece we can certainly expand on is the “human” element. Effective communication is a huge part of providing your customers with their “why” for upgrading.

Communication Strategies to Clinch the Customer Upgrade

If your upgrade strategy consists of providing a laundry list of features, then check this out…

Communication Strategies for Clinching Upgrades

If you run a “one to many” kind of model for communication in your SaaS, it totally makes sense when you’re talking about a relatively low-value product, but you also run the risk of not communicating effectively.

Those who get on the phone and really “sell” an enterprise level SaaS product have the opportunity to address questions or issues on the spot. They can ask questions of the customer and really dig down to ensure that they understand the value of the product and to address any reservations they may have.

The challenge for “one to many” SaaS lies in being able to communicate effectively so that those concerns are addressed and customers still genuinely see the value of the product.

Stand for Something

If you want customers to be loyal to your SaaS instead of having a sort of “meh” or general lack of excitement toward it, then standing for something is important.

What are your values? What’s your story? Customers like to go with brands who they can relate to, so you have a better chance of getting those upgrades if you show them you have a developed culture and values.

We tend to buy from people we like and we’re much more likely to purchase if a brand is doing well at connecting. Decide early on what it is that you stand for and let this form a basis for how you communicate and what content you put out.

Reduce any Friction

Have you assessed how your customers communicate with you lately? For starters, it needs to be easy for them to get ahold of you or find the answers they need when they need to.

We like this from WP Curve: “For most of your life, everyone probably told you not to talk to invisible people. But when you run a SaaS business, your #1 priority is to connect with customers you can’t see and figure out what keeps them happy.”

You rely on the interactions customers have with you to provide the best possible outcomes for the customer. If your system is disjointed or clunky in any way, the customer will notice because those interactions won’t be satisfactory. If I couldn’t get hold of you for several days while on your free trial, why would I decide to upgrade? Won’t I get more of the same if I need help?

Understand Customer Types

According to a Wharton study, all consumers fall into one of three groups; tightwads, spendthrifts or the group in the middle — “unconflicted.” You’re going to come across these in your SaaS, so you need to be able to use the right language to address them.

For example, it’s likely that your tightwads are going to be the ones sitting on a freemium service level forever, right? What kind of language will make them upgrade? During the Wharton study, “a small $5 fee” had better results with tightwads than “$5 fee.”

While the spendthrifts focus on the pleasure of having the product (there you go, highlight those benefits!), the tightwads respond to reframing the price to denote value. Looked at in another way for a SaaS, perhaps you could communicate how upgrading may, in fact, save the customer money. For example, if upgrading means they get features which render other products they use obsolete or if those features will save them vast amounts of time when they could be making more money instead.

Create Excitement

You’re busy developing and making upgrades to your product and the chances are, your team gets excited by the new developments. The key is to capture that excitement and create momentum around your product for customers too.

Share regular updates about what’s going on in your business and let customers see your excitement about any new features. Explain clearly how the new feature will help users to achieve their goals (remember those customer types we talked about!). If customers can follow along with your developments, it helps them to see the value in what you’re doing and to get excited about upgrading themselves.

Helpscout wrote a piece on this, focusing on “sharing your momentum” with customers. (They built a product to help do so). It’s all about building that anticipation.

Educate Your Customers

Customers upgrade when they trust you and can see the value of doing so, right? This means that your strategy for educating customers must be strong.

As David Skok explains, too many people jump into trying to sell to the customer, without making sufficient efforts to get to know them better or deliver value to them first. Relationships are important for landing any kind of sale, including upgrades, so make sure you put the time and effort in.

We’ve seen some advice suggesting you should call new free trial sign ups within five minutes of them coming onboard and start pitching them on upgrading. Hmm, we’d love to see some data on how well this actually works! So far the customer has been convinced by your marketing materials to sign up for the trial, but they don’t know you yet.

Would it be better to deliver some kind of value before pitching the upgrade? We think so, and this is where educating your customers is important too. How can you specifically help them with a problem? What are common pitfalls they may fall into? They need to know these things and understand how you can help.

Personalize Your Communication

It seems like many SaaS are still following a standard automated email campaign when customers sign up. Every new sign up gets the same; “welcome! Have you tried X feature yet? Here’s how it works… You get this at factor 10 when you upgrade. Upgrade today.”

Automated emails are ok, but for many customers, this is irrelevant. They already tried X feature and they know how it works. This means that you somewhat train them that emails from you may not be relevant to them.

A much more powerful strategy for SaaS is to use emails that are triggered based on actions taken. So you still get that automation which, let’s face it, if you’re a “one to many” kind of operation, you really need, but there is more meaning for your customers than blanket emails.

For example, you might set up emails which are triggered when a customer takes steps you’ve identified as your customer success milestones for your product. You need your customers to reach those in order to see the value of your app, so equally, you can trigger emails for those who have not reached certain milestones over a period of time.

The key lies in keeping your communication relevant to the customer. They’re less likely to upgrade if they’re not seeing value and if they’re not seeing messages that mean something to them.

Final Thoughts

If you want to clinch the customer upgrade, you need to look at how you’re communicating with them once they come on board with you. Many companies put a lot of focus on getting new sign ups onboard, but you can’t neglect communication strategies with your trial and freemium customers.

Make sure you’ve reduced any friction in how you communicate and how they can get hold of you. Stand for something so that customers are drawn in by your story and values, personalize communication, and educate your customers.

You might not be able to call everyone who signs up with you, but you can put steps in place so that they see the value of what you offer and want to upgrade with you.

Does your SaaS have a sales team? If so, you probably get the fact that your sales team becomes one of the most valuable assets to your business. (Of course with customer care — we can’t forget you guys!).

The sales team is responsible for how well your sales performance goes overall and it’s the job of their manager to be able to drive that performance.

Part of that involves regularly checking in with the team and holding sales meetings. However, like so many company meetings, SaaS often find that these aren’t especially effective.

If you’ve been walking out of meetings feeling that less was accomplished than you’d hoped, here are some tips to make them more effective.

Meeting Purpose

You don’t want to be that company, the one which falls into the “meeting for the sake of a meeting” trap and gets everyone together at 9am every morning, regardless of planning. If you’ve got nothing of value to say, the chances are that your team will start to tune out on these meetings, probably thinking about the work that is waiting for them to get on with!

On the other hand, if your meetings are kept meaningful and held as needed, people will tend to pay more attention. You might need that daily standup meeting, but the point is that there should always be a purpose to it. If you haven’t had time to sort out a purpose and some clear goals, don’t bother with the meeting.

You might even have a lot of things to say, but try to stick to no more than 2 – 3 purposes for your meeting. Meetings become ineffective if they drag on too long, beyond the attention spans of the participants, also, too many purposes may only add confusion. Something is bound to be missed. If you have a single purpose that needs quite some digging into, perhaps leave that as the sole purpose of the meeting.

Set Goals

It’s always easier to ensure you’ve achieved something with your meeting if you set some specific goals around the purpose/s you have set.

To help you get good solutions, make sure you have clearly outlined the problem/purpose in the first place. During the meeting, come up with solutions which explain “what”, “by who” and “by when” so that results are measurable and key actions are specific.

Meeting Structure

One of the big reasons behind meetings that flop is a lack of structure. You’ve got to go in with a game plan otherwise you risk that topics fly all over the place and nothing of substance gets achieved. You also risk that there are no definite end-points and meetings drag out.

Here are some pointers to set boundaries around structure:

Send out an agenda beforehand. This helps your team to come in prepared with research or ideas which can help you reach solutions.

Set a time limit and stick to it. If you’re going to go beyond around 45 minutes, you’ll start to lose people (plus, you’re eating significantly into work time). If the purpose is to pump the team up before a successful sales day, stick to 10 minutes or less.

Keep an eye on that time limit and make sure actionable solutions are being taken away. You shouldn’t come out of a meeting without decisions having been made.

Getting More From Your Sales Meetings

Provide Guidance

You’ll have all sorts of personalities in your sales team and your meetings need someone to keep them in check. How many times have you been in a meeting that has gone off-topic?

If topics are heading down side-roads, make a decision as to whether they add to the conversation or whether they are better noted down for later. Take charge to keep things on track.

You should also look out for people who have a tendency to dominate or talk over others, as well as those who are quieter and may like the opportunity to speak up. Make sure that everyone gets the chance to have their say.

Recognize Performance

Your sales team works hard to get good results and making time to recognize that is important. If you consistently recognize performance in your meetings, it helps to keep your team motivated and have them look forward to attending.

As GoCo states: “Recognizing the contributions employees make to an organization helps solidify relationships, fosters employee engagement and loyalty to the organization.”

If you want to keep your team pumped and contributing to meetings, help them feel valued by recognizing them for the good work they have done.

Up the Fun Factor

Don’t underestimate the benefits of adding an element of fun to your meetings. It’s about engagement, getting the ideas flowing and building camaraderie in your team.

Sales can be very high-pressure, so a chance to let off steam is often welcomed and reminds people to enjoy what they are doing. Close.io talks about how they add a fun element to their sales meetings by including physical activity. They would bounce on small trampolines while going through the numbers (Bonus: this will get the blood pumping and help the flow of ideas).

You could look at beginning your meetings with a quick couple of minutes on some kind of warm up activity. The idea is not to take too long over it, but to set the scene for a productive meeting.

Ideas might include:

Have the issues you need to discuss posted around the wall, each on a separate piece of paper. Have your team move around and write an idea on each.

Dress up or role play.

Have a standing meeting.

Balloon toss – write topics on a piece of paper and put one in each balloon. Blow up and have the team bat them around. After 30 seconds to a minute, have the team stop with whatever balloon they have, pop it and work on the idea.

There are many ideas you can use to inject some fun and help get meetings moving along productively. If you get stuck, there are a number of resources available online with a quick Google search.

Record and Follow Up

Here’s another area where companies commonly stumble with the efficiency of their meetings; you need to ensure that ideas and actions are being recorded and that there is follow up afterwards to ensure those responsible know what they’re doing and are getting on with it.

Delegate someone on your team (or rotate the responsibility) for taking notes during the meeting and sending out a summary along with who is responsible for what afterwards. This gives you the paper trail you need to make sure those meetings really are productive and that things don’t fall through the cracks. A good strategy is to have actions entered into whatever task management system you use immediately afterwards. This could be the responsibility of whoever is taking the notes.

Final Thoughts

You don’t want to be one of those SaaS who expends a lot of time and energy on “meetings for the sake of meetings.” You do want to ensure that meetings are productive and that they serve to engage and motivate your sales team members.

Always have a plan and purpose for meetings — you shouldn’t be going in with no agenda as this opens it up to go off on tangents. Set goals for the meeting, stick to a timetable and make sure it is clear who is doing what with some follow up afterwards.

Injecting recognition and time for fun are great ideas for keeping your sales team pumped. The aim is that your team leave the meeting even more motivated than they were before they went in.

For most, churn is a metric for considerable concern. You work hard to bring new customers onboard, so you want to see return on that investment by having customers who stick around with you.

It takes some effort on the part of SaaS to hold good retention rates. Signing up to a plan does not mean the customer will stick around when leaving is as easy as hitting a “cancel” button.

This is where SaaS need to look for ways in which they can create loyalty among their customers. A customer who feels nurtured by your company and generally looked after is more likely to stay and possibly even become an advocate for your brand.

Here are some strategies SaaS can implement to foster loyalty:

#1. Take Feedback Onboard

Statistic: 97% of consumers said they are somewhat likely to become more loyal to a company that implements their feedback. (Apptentive)

Listening to and implementing customer feedback should always be a priority if you want to grow your SaaS and truly look after the needs of the customer.

This does not mean you should be rushing to produce every single feature request — you still need to weigh up the goals of the business and the customer you wish to serve first. However, think about it this way; what support requests are you getting frequently? Are there common questions or irritations with how a feature works? All SaaS should treat the collection, organization and prioritization of customer feedback as a priority.

This might mean putting out new training materials. It might mean sending out a quick explainer email. It definitely means finding ways to proactively seek customer feedback and taking a broader focus on customer success.

Bridging Customer Support and Product Development

Your Customer Support team tends to the the frontline of eyes and ears when it comes to customer feedback. The challenge for SaaS who have a product development team independent from Customer Support is to ensure that there are no barriers to communication between the two.

UserVoice wrote about the importance of keeping Customer Support and Product Development in sync: “as many teams have discovered, bridging the gap between Product and Support is actually really difficult.” They interviewed Mercer Smith-Looper about how her team has made bridging the gap work at Wistia. In their case, by using designated “Customer Champions” who can reach out to a “Dev on Point” to address or escalate issues.

Require Feedback from Churning Customers

Many SaaS don’t really have a mechanism in place to gather feedback when the customer does hit “cancel.”Seth Banks of Subimage discussed the good and bad of requiring feedback from cancelling customers in a blog post. Where they used to have optional feedback for cancelling customers, they decided to make it a required field.

Sometimes they got feedback which was less than helpful from annoyed customers, but they get enough helpful feedback for it to make sense to have feedback as a requirement. They use that feedback to stay on top of development priorities. Sometimes they even manage to get the customer back as a result of addressing the feedback.

4 Strategies to Foster Loyalty in Your SaaS

#2. Keep Them Interested

Statistic: “80% of shoppers would switch stores or brands when offered a compelling promotion.” (MarketTrack)

You might think it’s too inconvenient or that your customers are too loyal to switch, but it really is that easy, even for SaaS. This means that the line “always be selling” holds true, even when you’ve already got the customer signed up.

Here’s how Venturebeat puts it:

“SaaS companies are literally always selling, because they have to keep the customer from hitting the cancel button each month. That means they always have to provide value for their customers, which is a huge departure from traditional vendors that will just stay on-premises until they’re ripped out.”

This doesn’t necessarily mean a “promotion” is the way to go, but there are other things you can be doing so that the customer feels like they are getting so much value from you that they’re really not interested in switching.

“Value” should include an exceptional customer service experience with personalized attention where needed. Customers don’t connect with the SaaS, but they do connect with the human faces of it. Use names, talk about your team and who they really are and address your customers personally where they need help.

When you think about it, is it easier to hit cancel on “Random SaaS Name”, or to cancel on “Annie” who has gone above and beyond to provide them with a good service?

Value should also include a focus on customer success. Know what your customers’ goals are and what success will look like to them. Map out their journey with your SaaS and identify those success milestones which they need to reach. The value part comes in when you help them get there…

#3. Rewards and Surprises

Everyone tends to enjoy the good kind of surprise and your SaaS customers are no different. Of course, rewards are by no means a compulsory component of successful SaaS, but they sure do help with keeping people interested and fostering their loyalty.

It’s about channeling that “surprise and delight” element at the right times for your customer. For example, you might choose to reward them for their loyalty at certain milestones by:

Offering a free upgrade.

Giving them an “extra” in features such as more storage or a feature they couldn’t access before.

Offer a discount for sticking with you for a longer period.

Surprise with a gift of some kind.

As Inc. columnist Peter Economy puts it, “think customer surprise.” If you remember that feeling of anticipation and delight as a kid when you opened up a cereal box with a prize, this is the kind of response you can evoke from your clients when you do something for them. “The secret to delivering great customer service is to give your customers a surprise–something they didn’t expect. It’s those unexpected experiences that leave customers with a story they are eager to tell.”

What kind of surprise would your customers appreciate?

#4. Educate Employees

Statistic: “25% of employers have seen an increase in customer loyalty after increasing employee educational requirements.” (Career Builder)

This is not specifically a SaaS statistic but it makes sense that better-educated employees will be able to provide your customers with a better service experience. Make sure your customer service people have the tools and training they need to provide excellent service every time they interact with your customers.

Give employees discretion to solve problems and create a process for them to escalate any issues. Make sure this includes that a customer never has to repeat themselves to someone else! This is a huge irritation and can contribute to feelings of a poor service experience.

“81% of consumers admit that it is frustrating dealing with a company that does not make it easy to do business with them.” (Accenture).

Final Thoughts

If your SaaS wants to keep churn to a minimum and retain customers, you need to work on strategies which will develop loyalty toward your business. You won’t keep everyone (customers can be fickle like that!), but you will be able to impress sufficient numbers who will want to stay with your excellent service.

Adopt the “always be selling” mantra and find new ways to surprise, delight or boost the customer experience. Make it so your customers would feel bad about leaving…

In the SaaS business, engaging early with your customers is mission-critical for delivering the best possible experiences and smoothing their way to stay onboard with you.

As Lincoln Murphy often says; “the seeds of churn are planted early.” This means that everything you do from the time the customer first makes contact with you is weighting the scale either one way or the other — to stay? Or to go?

Generally speaking, your customers are looking for a good solution to their problem and preferably, they want that solution to be as simple as possible. For every hurdle you have, you will lose at least someone who decides that it’s not worth the hassle.

For this reason, it’s important to look at strategies for smoothing out the onboarding process and ensuring customers are enthusiastic about staying with you. Anyone who feels their experience was “meh” is probably one click away from cancelling.

SaaS need to take a serious look at every touchpoint their prospects and clients have, starting with that first contact…

First Impressions

Did you know that people judge a website in just fifty milliseconds from arriving on it? Yep, that’s how much time you have to create a first impression!

While UX and UI considerations come into the picture, most SaaS now seem to be doing fairly well with the idea of clean, simple website design. (If not, it’s time for yours to sort that out!).

One area for which many SaaS are not doing so great is in explaining well upfront what they are about and who they are for. If you can’t explain to me early on in concise language what it is you do, while I might be curious enough to continue, find out more and sign up for a trial, the impression I already have is that you’re perhaps a bit complicated or a bit tenuous over your concept. You don’t want the overall view of your customer to be colored by that kind of impression.

That is not to say that you should try to cram everything into one sentence for the sake of brevity. Many SaaS are much more complicated than that when it comes to explaining what they are about, so why not use a few bullet points instead? Focus on the pain points that you solve first, go into detail later.

Setting the Right Expectations

This is another thing which is critical to get right in those early stages. No one likes to enter into a SaaS product thinking it’s the answer to their problems, only to find that it doesn’t quite look like the impression that was given.

Benjamin Brandall discussed this in a post for Process St as the “disconnect between product and packaging.” This is where the marketing material isn’t a true reflection of the in-app experience, another reason why SaaS might experience churn in the early stages after sign up. How annoyed would you be if you had an experience like the image below?

The lesson is that setting your SaaS (and your customers) up for success begins with ensuring you are creating the right first impressions. Don’t let customers be fooled by unrealistic, glossy packaging and make sure your copy is clear about what you do and who you do it for.

The Sign-Up Process

This is the logical next-step in customer onboarding; they’ve checked out your website, perhaps some of the content you’ve produced, and they’ve decided to go ahead and sign up for your free trial.

How much friction is involved in your sign-up process?

Brandon Hickie discusses the counter-arguments for gathering more versus less information on sign-up in a post for Open View. The ultimate answer on how much information to ask for relies on how well you know your customers.

Yes, in the eyes of the SaaS more information is better because it allows you to segment and to personalize your messaging, but what sort of customer are you after? Many customers will prefer to test you out and develop a relationship first, before handing over more information about themselves. Though on the other hand, you might be of the view that those who are not willing to take a couple of minutes to fill out a form do not fit into your ideal customer mould.

Of course, you could take the stance of slowly collecting more information over time, but the ultimate lesson here is to understand your target customers very well and create a sign-up process accordingly. If you go for higher friction and your customers tend to be very busy types, you’ve probably created a tiresome impression already.

How can you make the signup process friendlier? Grab our free tips here.

Strategies for Successful SaaS Customer Onboarding

Welcome Emails

Ok, the customer has reached the next step; that point which happens immediately after they’ve gone ahead and signed up. For most SaaS, this next touchpoint is a welcome email (or series of emails).

Lincoln Murphy wrote an informative article on customer onboarding emails where he makes great points; apart from following known email best practices, any SaaS onboarding emails should lead the customer directly to the actions they need to take in order to achieve success or value from your SaaS.

You want your messaging to be crystal clear. That first email should point customers to the first logical activity on the list to complete. There should be a goal for each email you send and a map of the journey which the new customer needs to take. Guide them across that journey through logical sequence in your emails.

Using a single, clear call to action in your emails is also good practice. If you’re inviting them to download your iPhone app, connect with you on Facebook or anything else besides the key in-app action you want them to take, the chances are most will either be confused and do nothing or pick one thing, whether it’s the critical action or not.

High or Low Touch?

The aim of every SaaS is to wow customers, solve a significant problem for them and have them onboard as loyal customers. While this seems simple in theory, in practice there are a number of considerations to bring people to that point.

You can’t just leave the rest of your onboarding process to a few emails and hope for the best; as pointed out by Nate Munger for Salesforce, this would be failing to take into account that your customers represent multiple learning styles.

So cater to different learning styles, but will you go for low or high touch?

Low Touch

When your target customer base is large, it’s simply not possible to personally reach out to all of them, or even a large percentage. So, what happens when your product introduces new ways of doing things which will be a learning curve for users?

Microsoft was a master of low touch onboarding, particularly as demonstrated by their introduction of games to get people used to using a mouse and the mechanisms for how Windows would work. Solitaire and Minesweeper may have caused hours of time-wasting, but they sure were a good way to engage people and have them quickly pick up the skills needed.

Slack provides a great example of today’s low-touch onboarding process. Slackbot helps to guide people through essential tasks and will even chat back when users type in questions.

High Touch

High touch (or as it is often referred to; “concierge onboarding”), looks more closely at each individual customer and treats them according to their specific needs. This might involve measures such as using customer success coaches who personally reach out to clients and make sure they help them to see value from the app.

This type of onboarding is more commonly used in SaaS which have produced a product that is not easily explained and is perhaps of a more high-end or enterprise variety. Where the company is laying out bigger dollars to have the software, it is often an expectation that they will receive more of a concierge service.

The key goal of both low or high touch methods is that the customer understands the product very well and can see how to get value from it. Whichever you choose, you need to clearly be helping the customer solve a problem which brings them to success and making the achievement of that success as easy as possible for them.

]]>7 Key Elements of SaaS Customer Supporthttp://blog.stunning.co/7-key-elements-of-saas-customer-support/
Mon, 15 Aug 2016 11:00:36 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=989You might have the best features, but does your SaaS have these critical customer support elements in place?

It’s easy for a customer to cancel their subscription to your SaaS, just watch them!

Unfortunately, too many SaaS find themselves in this situation where cancellations are happening left and right. This can be especially frustrating when you’ve heard nothing but good feedback and you’re left wondering what the problem is.

We have spoken a bit previously about defining customer success for your SaaS and basically ensuring that customers reach the milestones they need to in order to see value or success from using your app. An important part of customer success tends to be what you’re doing with customer support.

What are the key elements of effective customer support for SaaS? Let’s take a look.

#1. Support Is Easy to Find

Your SaaS might have the most impressive set of features in your category, but if your customers can’t easily find ways to get help, they’re of no use to them.

This might seem 101 or very basic, but it’s still amazing just how many SaaS build a beautiful, simple website that is so “clean” that finding help is not obvious at all. Here’s a clue; if your customers need to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and search through footer menus to find how to get help, it’s not clear enough.

When thinking about website design, in-app support features and any other support you may provide, put yourself in the mindset of the customer (or have a third party test it out for you). Remember, a customer seeking support is possibly already frustrated about something so they’re looking for a quick and easy solution.

Also bear in mind that these customers may never even let you know that they’ve had a problem. Silent customers actually make things more difficult for you than the loud complainer — at least with the complainer you have a chance to address the issue. Often, the silent customer simply cancels without another word, whereas if they’d said to you “it’s hard to find support”, you may have been able to take care of it.

#2. Self-Service Options Available

Your customers come in all shapes and sizes, so they also will have different preferences when it comes to how they get support. Many people actually like to get on the phone or find sending an email easy, but plenty of people would prefer to be able to easily look up the answer themselves.

Efficient SaaS provide quality self-service options for customers looking for support. This may be in the form of a knowledge base, FAQ page or even a resource library where you have stored content such as “how-to” videos. Some SaaS will also include a community forum where members can ask and answer questions.

The point is, customers expect an omni-channel customer support experience these days and self-service options which actually deliver value are seen as a given. You may think that your customer service line or email response is so good that self-service doesn’t matter, but in not ensuring you have valuable self-service options, you’re ignoring what has become a best practice.

7 Key Elements of SaaS Customer Support

#3. Stay on Top of Regular Requests

This is about proactively working to make improvements. You can’t cater to every feature request or suggestion, but you can be paying attention to what is regularly coming up from customers.

It is good practice to assess the support requests you get and dig down to see if you have an underlying issue. For example, if you’ve got multiple requests for a similar reason, that’s a pretty big clue, but you should also look at your one-off complaints, requests or suggestions. Is it one of those things where it is highly possibly others have the same issue but have said nothing?

Always be looking to improve.

#4. Have Customer Success Staff

What’s the difference between customer support and customer success? As Salesforce sums up, customer support can be seen as the reactive, day-to-day response to customer requests, whereas customer success is there to take a proactive role.

One of the top goals of customer success is to keep customers engaged with the product, regularly in touch with the SaaS and seeing value from the software. Customer success identifies the milestones customers need to hit to be engaged and understands that “success” will be subjective to each customer.

What does this have to do with support? Having staff in place who are dedicated to customer success will often reduce the load on customer support. It’s much better to be getting in early in the piece and ensuring that customers are achieving what they’d like to with the product, prior to them getting annoyed and contacting customer support.

#5. Have the Right Support Staff

You’d think there’d be no excuse for shoddy customer service these days, but there seems to be a never-ending supply of people put in customer service roles who really shouldn’t be there. SaaS at the early stage are often in a pinch with limited people, and founders, while they may be enthusiastic in terms of making sales, they’re not always the best with customers!

Having the right people in customer support roles (even if that is initially one person), could be seen as a valuable investment in the future of your SaaS. After all, even with brilliant features, a poor customer service experience could be what sees the customer exit early.

If there is any kind of complexity in your software which is not easy to explain through self-service options, then you are likely to have customers seeking an actual person to help them. For this reason, SaaS should be looking for people with both exceptional customer service skills and required technical aptitude.

#6. Have Published Standards

Even if you feel you have the best possible customer service people in place, a golden rule is never to assume that they will all uphold the same standards. Why would they if you haven’t told them what those are?

The best customer service teams in the world have guidelines, which is probably why they’re so good! Consider standards such as:

How quickly customers must receive a response.

Any discretions staff should have for refunds or just to “make things right.”

How customers are to be greeted.

When and how to follow up with customers.

How to track requests and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Any standards about responding to specific situations.

Besides having published standards for your customer support team, it is encouraging for customers to see you have published Service Level Agreements (SLAs). For example, what is your standard for dealing with any downtime? How quickly do you agree to respond to customer queries? Simply having these published can save angst because the customer already knows what to expect.

#7. Be Transparent

Customers often still have a certain level of suspicion about SaaS. As Gartner found, the “big data” industry creates uncertainty about security of information and in many people, a feeling that the SaaS is charging a lot of money for something which isn’t costing them a lot.

Your customer support should seek to reduce or eliminate any suspicion by being transparent about your policies, pricing and any issues which are going on. Kissmetrics suggests that you follow these practices to reduce skepticism:

Notify users of downtime.

Give customers advance notice of pricing or contract changes.

Explain to customers where their money goes.

Answer any questions that prospective customers have.

Make it easy for customers to cancel service.

It often boils down to not making your customers jump through hoops to get answers. Be proactive and stay on top of any possible issues which can lead to skepticism.

Looking for a good customer support tool? We’ll show you our favorites.

Final Thoughts

The quality of your customer support will often determine the longevity of your customers with your SaaS. There are SaaS which are still making basic mistakes in not providing customer support at a level which it should be and they tend to pay the price in the form of churn.

Besides a quality software, the experience of the customer with your SaaS overall is a big factor in whether or not they hang around. Give them the level of quality support they need, including self-service options, proactively seeking to resolve issues and maintaining transparency.

What best practices do you feel should be in place for SaaS customer support?

]]>Setting the Right Tone in Your SaaS Startuphttp://blog.stunning.co/setting-the-right-tone-in-your-saas-startup/
Mon, 01 Aug 2016 11:00:45 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=974How can SaaS build up the right sort of company culture from their inception?

Is “company culture” something that has been given any kind of focus in your SaaS? You might see it as one of those slightly cringy buzzwords, but every company has a culture, whether you put any thought into it or not.

Company culture covers the overall attitudes, beliefs and individual quirks of your company. It looks different for every business and you’ll find that you tend to attract people who are in alignment with the culture you project.

It’s always better to make a conscious decision when it comes to setting the tone and culture for your SaaS. If you don’t, small habits can creep in and become bigger issues as you grow, or, you appear to be the same as any other SaaS out there.

Culture becomes the driving force behind your SaaS, so how do you set the right tone from the beginning?

Setting the Right Tone in Your SaaS Startup

What Is Company Culture?

It’s probably helpful to start with a definition of what company culture actually means. Investopedia has this:

“Corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company’s employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions. Often, corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the company hires.”

There are various “artifacts” or indicators of a corporate culture. These might include things like company vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits (Forbes).

Creating a Company Culture

As Retained points out, SaaS often seem to exist in an aura of unreality. Everyone might have access to catered lunches and Uber rides to work, but these things can simply be window dressing. They won’t make up for a company culture that is toxic, arrogant or lazy.

The story of Zenefits reads like a cautionary tale of what can happen when company culture goes unchecked. The thing is, they most likely would not have considered things might end up with drunken employees in stairwells, especially not while they were still small. The reminder to any company out there is that those things which appear small which you tolerate while you’re still a small startup, can turn into big issues when you grow.

Shots after every milestone might seem like a great way to celebrate, but as pointed out by Business Insider, the problem really occurs when what seems like a small thing spirals into a big deal. If you go from a handful of people having a drink once in a while to a big team doing the same thing several times a day, you’re in danger of creating the kind of party culture which can be destructive to business.

The lesson? Be careful of what you create or tolerate while you are small. All businesses, including SaaS, should start out the way they mean to continue and set the right tone from the beginning.

Defining Your Company Culture

As William Craig points out, “company culture is something that is pre-existing in your company’s genetic code; it’s not something that employees bring with them.” Companies can have one employee or none, they still have a culture of some kind.

It’s also worth noting that company culture is not about putting values up on the wall or generally espousing a culture which doesn’t necessarily exist in reality. Culture is about the norms in your organization, if you say something like “our customers are at the center of our business”, yet staff are ignoring help requests for long periods of time, all you have is a poster with no substance.

Defining and shaping company culture should come from the top down and include things like:

Mission Statement – The overall driver behind your organization. Any goals and values set should point directly to the mission statement.

“To help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.”

Values – Your values are the guiding principles by which you will achieve your mission statement. Anyone you hire should be onboard with these same values and they truly need to be lived out everyday by your company.

Check out Asana’s values below and see how they back up their mission statement:

People – A key part of whether or not you achieve your desired company culture lies with the people you have. After all, they are the ones responsible for living and enacting those values that you have!

One way of putting together your company mission and values is to use an inverse model of Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team to ensure that anyone you hire into your team fits well and that team dynamics are productive.

Any SaaS should consider how their team should be constructed and work together too. Without a team which functions well, your SaaS could easily collapse. For example, you might choose to ensure that you create an environment of trust or that questioning and healthy debate are encouraged.

Changing a Company Culture

Now, you might be thinking that this is all very good for SaaS which are starting out and have the opportunity to begin how they mean to continue, but what if you’re in the situation where you really need to change the culture that has developed?

Many businesses find themselves in this position because they perhaps pushed the issue aside, didn’t consider it or felt that they didn’t have time to deal it early on. (Look at Zenefits, certain “cultural norms” didn’t lead to trouble when they were small, but rapid growth in 2015 saw those norms expand across a wider team and cause trouble).

Here are a few steps to take:

Audit Current Culture

What is really going on in your business? How do employees behave on the job? Are they happy to be there? Take notes of anything you find good or bad. These are symptoms of what your overall culture really is and it is important to identify them to enact change.

Ensure Clarity

Do you have a clearly defined purpose? Do you have vision and values which your employees clearly buy into? Incorporating these and what they mean into staff trainings or meetings is important.

One large bank which introduced new mission and values put heavy focus on activities which promoted their new values and got employees thinking about how those could work in practice. It’s almost indoctrinating, but not with unpleasant connotations.

If you make your mission and values of high importance in your organization, you may find you have some staff turnover, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Any company going through changes in that area will often find that it is a catalyst for those who are not onboard with the values to leave.

Foster Engagement

Team buy-in is always going to be a key factor in the implementation of your mission and values. It’s about preparing your team well to fulfill your purpose and ensuring you have buy-in. Look for any stumbling blocks which may cause employees to feel less than empowered to do their jobs and fix them. Encourage a supportive team environment which encourages employees to take part.

You Have to Care

If your employees are always a secondary consideration, they don’t tend to engage so well with your business. This is the kind of scenario which can lead to higher staff turnover, making it difficult to maintain a positive company culture. You should be seen actively caring about the welfare of employees in your work environment. This tends to boost their overall job satisfaction and the likelihood that they will make every effort for your values.

Final Thoughts

Company culture in your SaaS shouldn’t be something that is left to chance. Every company has a culture, whether there is one employee or several it is better to consciously choose what that culture consists of.
Take the time to work on your culture and develop the best possible environment for the success of your business. It’s one of those things you don’t really want to end up trying to clean up later on…